How we agree Informed Consent with research participants

At IF, research is fundamental to our work. We want to ensure that the people we carry out research with are well-informed, comfortable, protected and respected throughout the entirety of their engagement with us. We also want them to enjoy their experience of being involved with research. As a part of this, we make sure that Informed Consent is agreed with every research participant.

IF’s Informed Consent form template

Using the World Health Organisation’s template, the brilliant input from the IF team over the years and the useful information shared by GDS, we have created an openly licenced Informed Consent form template for others to use too.

IF’s openly licenced Informed Consent form template

Click here to open the Informed Consent form template in Google Docs, then click File > Make a copy to create an editable version of your own.

We hope that this serves as a useful tool for other practitioners frequently carrying out user research. Read on for some best practice tips when agreeing Informed Consent with participants.

What is Informed Consent?

Put simply, Informed Consent means getting a record from research participants to show that they understand your research, know what they’re signing up to and agree to take part. But a participant’s signature on an Informed Consent form is only part of the process. For the decision to truly be considered “informed”, further steps must be taken.

What do people need to be informed of?

The template covers everything a participant must understand for consent to be informed:

• who is doing the research
• the purpose of the research
• what data you’re collecting
• what will happen during the research (including whether the session is being observed and who’s watching)
• whether and how the session is being recorded
• how you will use the results of the research, and who you’ll share them with
• that their participation is voluntary, and that they can stop or withdraw their consent at any time
• how long their data will be kept
• what their rights are and how they can complain
• who they should go to with any questions
• how they can stay informed about research outcomes

What else do I need to do?

Having an Informed Consent form should be part of a wider engagement process that ensures participants are well-informed, comfortable, protected and respected:

• Send the information to participants in advance of research, so that they have time to read it through and prepare questions about things they are unsure about
• Get researchers to ask participants questions to double check the participant has understood key parts of the research
• Explain clearly or show examples in context of how the data will be stored, who will have access to it and when it will be removed from your system
• Establish a system to share and manage signed consent forms (we use Hellosign)
• Ensure you have the signed consent form ahead of every research session. At IF we download each signed form, rename them using non-identifiable participant tracker IDs and store them in a participant tracker

How do I comply with data protection laws?

Our Informed Consent form includes information about how we handle participants’ personal data. There are processes that must be followed to protect our research participants.

Decide how to record information carefully and clearly disclose this to participants:

• If you’re going to record participants in any way during research you should make this clear to participants as part of gaining Informed Consent
• Recording research sessions of participants with multiple methods increases the security risk to the participants as more data has been collected about them and they are more easily identifiable
• For each method of recording, think carefully about whether it is absolutely necessary to do. Collect only the amount of information you need to effectively feed back to your design teams

Storing and labelling data needs to be secure and private:

• Store signed Informed Consent forms in a secure place, as they contain personal information
• Refer to participants using a code system rather than using names e.g. P01, P02, P03 etc
• Securely store a key to the identity of the codes
• Keep raw data, transcripts and audiovisual files in a separate place to processed data and preferably not on an online server
• Delete any raw data after the project has finished

Having a robust Informed Consent process improves understanding and trust between researchers and participants. As such, we are always open to any feedback or suggested improvements - please get in touch via comments or hello@projectsbyif.com if you have thoughts you’d like to share!

Acknowledgements: This blog post and consent form has been written and edited by many people over the years at IF. A special shout out to Charley Pothecary, Georgina Bourke and Cath Richardson for their contributions.

If you’re interested in working with us, please get in touch via hello@projectsbyif.com. We have some availability this year for new work, though our diaries are filling up fast.